Cinemax spent the 2000s as the channel you kept after the free preview ended. In January 2013 it tried to change that with two original dramas, and one of them was Banshee — a show about a thief who walks into a Pennsylvania town and leaves wearing a dead sheriff’s badge.
That premise is the whole pitch, and it is a good one. Banshee ran four seasons and 38 episodes, from January 11, 2013, to May 20, 2016. It was created by David Schickler and Jonathan Tropper, and it starred Antony Starr as the man everyone calls Lucas Hood.
The show is an action series, listed in some places as crime and drama. It ends at 6.6 of 10 on Metacritic.
A Dead Sheriff and a Stolen Name
The setup comes fast. A man finishes 15 years in prison for stealing $15 million in diamonds from his employer, a Ukrainian mob boss named Rabbit. His lover and accomplice, Anastasia — Rabbit’s daughter — already took the loot and disappeared. Rabbit hunts him, certain the man will lead him to both the daughter and the stones.
The man runs to Banshee, a small fictional town in Pennsylvania Amish country, where Anastasia has been living as Carrie Hopewell: wife of the district attorney, mother of two. On his way in, he stops at a bar. Lucas Hood, the town’s new sheriff, is there and is killed within minutes when he steps into a dispute between local criminals and the bar owner.
So the ex-con takes the dead man’s name and job. He imposes his own brand of justice, keeps running his own schemes, and tries to sort things out with Carrie while Rabbit closes in.
That is a lot of machinery for a first episode, and Banshee never really slows down to explain itself. It just keeps moving.
Antony Starr, Before the Badge
Starr carries the show. Hood is a liar in a borrowed uniform, and Starr plays him as a man who has decided that the only way to survive is to keep walking forward. He is not charming. He is not sorry. The performance works because Starr never asks you to like him.
The supporting cast is where the show’s real range sits. Ivana Miličević plays Carrie, a woman who built a family on top of a lie and has to keep paying for it. Hoon Lee is Job, Hood’s partner in crime and the show’s best source of energy. Frankie Faison is Sugar Bates, the bar owner who becomes Hood’s anchor. Ulrich Thomsen is Kai Proctor, the ex-Amish crime lord who runs the town’s other economy.
Then there is the bench: Matthew Rauch as Clay Burton, Matt Servitto as Deputy Brock Lotus, Lili Simmons as Rebecca Bowman, Ryann Shane as Deva Hopewell, Tom Pelphrey as Kurt Bunker, Chris Coy as Calvin Bunker.
That is a deep roster, and it is the reason the show holds up when the plot gets silly.
Four Seasons, One Long Fight
Season one is Hood versus Rabbit, with Carrie in the middle. Hood breaks the law constantly, alienates his own deputies, and fights Proctor on the side. Rabbit eventually finds him, and Hood surrenders to spare Carrie. Carrie then leads accomplices and the deputies in a raid to free him and shoots Rabbit.
Season two shifts to a casino. Tribal chief Alex Longshadow wants to build one on the reservation, which puts Hood between Longshadow and Proctor. Carrie goes to prison for her part in the raid against her father. Hood starts a relationship with his deputy, Siobhan.
The show kept getting renewed on a short leash. A 10-episode second season debuted in January 2014. Cinemax renewed it for a third season that same month, and that season debuted in January 2015. In February 2015 the network ordered an eight-episode fourth and final season, which closed on May 20, 2016.
Along with Strike Back, Banshee was one of Cinemax’s first original series since the Comedy Experiment and The Richard Belzer Show in the 1980s and early ’90s. That matters for how the show looks.
What the Show Gets Right, and What It Doesn’t
Here is the comparison that explains Banshee best. It has two modes, and they are not equally good.
| Element | The crime story | The town story |
|---|---|---|
| Driver | Hood’s diamonds and Rabbit | Proctor, Longshadow, the casino |
| Tone | Tense, personal, closed | Sprawling, political, open |
| Best material | Season one’s pursuit | Season two’s turf war |
| Weakness | Repetitive cat-and-mouse | Too many factions, too little payoff |
The crime story is the engine. The town story is the show’s attempt to become something bigger, and it only half works. When Banshee keeps its focus on Hood, Carrie, Job and Sugar, it is sharp and mean and fun. When it spreads out into casino politics and reservation power struggles, it starts to feel like a show that mistook more characters for more story.
The action is the other thing. Banshee fights are ugly, close and loud, and the show treats violence as a cost rather than a punchline. That is rarer than it sounds.
The Case for Banshee
The weakness is real. Four seasons is a long time to watch a man lie about who he is, and the show repeats its own beats more than it should. Carrie’s past, Rabbit’s pursuit, Proctor’s reach — these are strong ideas that get stretched. By the final season the show is running on momentum and Starr’s face.
But the parts that work are worth the parts that don’t. Banshee understood something most crime shows forget: a small town with one crooked sheriff is more interesting than a big city with ten. The show’s best trick is that Hood is not a hero and never becomes one. He is a criminal doing a job badly, and the town keeps paying for it.
Hoon Lee’s Job is the only person on the show having any fun.
Banshee is not a great show. It is a good one with a great premise, a strong lead and a habit of overreaching. The Metacritic score of 6.6 out of 10 sits about where the show lands: respectable, not remarkable, and carried by a cast that deserved more attention than it got.
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